There are many advantages to the electronic filing of applications for admission to institutions of higher learning, such as colleges and universities. Electronic applications provide the institution with application data almost immediately after the application is completed, and data is in a form that is immediately accessible for processing by admissions personnel to assist in recruiting efforts. Although some schools allow direct electronic application, many chose to take advantage of the special expertise available at service providers, such as CollegeNET, Inc., the creator of the ApplyWeb™ system that services institutions and students by, among other things, processing admission applications. The ApplyWeb™ system is powered by the Universal Forms Engine, which is owned by Universal Algorithms and is described in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/325,533, which is hereby incorporated by reference.
The ApplyWeb™ system handles the applications and fee processing for many institutions and provides the institutions with the data they want in the form they require. ApplyWeb™ services can be transparent to the student, allowing applications to be “branded” with an institution's own logo and making applications accessible to potential students through the university's web site, or through the CollegeNet site of CollegeNET, Inc.
When applicants using the ApplyWeb™ system enter information into an application, the information is stored and automatically populates corresponding fields in subsequent applications. Unfortunately, certain attachments to applications, such as high school transcripts, must still be separately mailed to the institution and processed manually. Thus, until the high school mails a transcript to the college or university, the application package is not complete.
Although some high schools have the equipment to convert a transcript to digital form by scanning and e-mailing the transcript to the institution, many high schools do not yet have such technology. Moreover, upon receiving a scanned transcript, the institution would still have the problem of matching the transcript with the application. Lastly, the large number of high schools and institutions, combined with the many different data formats available, makes electronic data transfer directly between high schools and institutions a difficult problem.